


He Will Never Forget You (‘Til Somebody New Comes Along)

by Roundworm



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, They’re both gay and stupid, and per my usual writing style, it’s poetic ok, just right off the bat, so much repetition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23480530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roundworm/pseuds/Roundworm
Summary: He kept in slowly dwindling contact with a very select few people from the military: Mackenzie, who hardly ever wrote back anyway, and Blake, to whom he wrote nearly every week. And that was it. It had been exactly three months since Ellis sent a letter (not that he was keeping track, of course), and there had been exactly three months of radio silence.But that was absolutely fine. He’d already forgotten what he was so bothered by in the first place.
Relationships: Joseph Blake/Lieutenant Leslie
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	He Will Never Forget You (‘Til Somebody New Comes Along)

**Author's Note:**

> The title had significance when I was writing it at first but it kinda veered off and I can’t be bothered to think of something else  
> Also New Kid in Town slaps so

Ellis Leslie, former Lieutenant in the British Expeditionary Force, served in the war to end all wars, was very good at not caring about things. 

Maybe that was an oversimplification—he was very good at compartmentalizing things and shoving them to the very back of his brain where he forgets about them, until they rear their ugly heads a few years down the road. Today, as he sat at his desk in the attic and stared out the window, it was time to add another thing to the pile.

He could feel a migraine coming on as his abused brain cried out for room to breathe. Ellis chose to ignore this plea, shoving his worry and disappointment about the lack of a return letter from Joseph Blake into yet another box and cramming it down.

He kept in slowly dwindling contact with a very select few people from the military: Mackenzie, who hardly ever wrote back anyway, and Blake, to whom he wrote nearly every week. And that was it. It had been exactly three months since Ellis sent a letter (not that he was keeping track, of course), and there had been exactly three months of radio silence. 

But that was absolutely fine. He’d already forgotten what he was so bothered by in the first place. 

Ellis got up from his desk and lumbered heavily down the ladder to the ground floor. He made himself a pitiful dinner far too late into the evening in his tiny kitchen. He made his way to his bedroom and slept for nearly an hour before he jolted awake. Then, he sat in the pitiful little living room and stared blankly out the window. 

It was probably midnight by the time he moved again—not that he could really be fucked to check. He sunk further back into his pitiful couch and consciously blocked the wrought iron gates holding his memory at bay. He ought to wrap barbed wire around that gate. Are memories affected by barbed wire?

Ironically, that thought chipped through the gate to allow the memory of real, physical barbed wire to escape. By itself, the thought of barbed wire tearing through and catching on his clothes wasn’t the worst, but that memory had linked arms with other memories, which linked up with other memories, and soon enough there was a whole memory party in his brain.

It was the second worst party he’d ever attended.

Now, instead of remembering how much of a pain it was to unhook the barbs from his sleeve, he was remembering how they caught and tugged viciously on his pack as he dragged two corpses back to the trenches under heavy gunfire. The gunfire reminded him of putting soldiers out of their misery as they begged for death. The begging reminded him of pleas for help from French women and children that were as good as dead by the time they were found.

The French women and children reminded him of how fucking pointless and stupid the entire war was.

He needed something to distract him. Then, on the topic of distractions, he remembered that Blake hadn’t replied to his letter in exactly three months and one day. 

He vividly remembered the last letter the man had sent him, where he detailed the work that his mother was putting in to find him a lovely lady to wed one day. The tone in which it was written seemed exhausted at first, but after numerous, repeated, why-am-I-still-reading-this examinations, Ellis could probably pinpoint a few spots where Blake had seemed excited about it. 

That’s probably why he wasn’t responding anymore, Ellis figured. It was about damn time the guy stopped dicking around talking to him and settled down with a family. He sighed deeply and rubbed a hand over his face, pissed that his subconscious wasn’t agreeing.

Ellis forced himself up off of the couch and back to his bedroom, where he dug through his nightstand for his pack of cigarettes. Which he found were empty. Must’ve forgotten that detail too. He resigned himself to walking down to the nearest 24-hour corner store instead of melting into a stinking puddle of trauma on his couch. Imagine the stains.

Cursing harshly under his breath, Ellis snatched a few coins off of the surface of the nightstand and stuffed them in his pocket, having slept in his day clothes. It was freezing, but he’d already walked outside and he didn’t want to have to walk all the way back inside to get a jacket. At least the biting cold gave him something else to focus on.

If there was one thing in this world that Ellis was thankful for, it was that the corner store was only a hop, skip, and a jump away from his shitty old house. He greeted the cashier when that annoying bell stopped ringing above the door, making a beeline directly to the counter.

If there was one thing in this world that Ellis was decidedly not thankful for, it was how he somehow ended up side eyeing Joseph Blake—in the flesh—from across the store. His shriveled up heart sprung into action as he spoke to the teenage cashier through gritted teeth, trying to hurry this damn transaction along before, God forbid, Blake noticed him too.

The Blake’s don’t even live down here, what the hell? What was he doing here?

Ellis hurriedly handed over his spare coins and muttered a quick “keep the change” as he snatched up the pack of cigarettes from the counter. 

He managed to get one foot out the door before Blake called out to him, sounding surprised and a bit questioning. Maybe if he played it off like he didn’t know who Blake was talking to, he could escape this conversation. 

He got another foot out the door. 

“Ellis,” Dammit. “Could you wait a second, please?” 

Begrudgingly, Ellis shuffled back into the store, his eyes trained downwards. He tuned out the friendly conversation that Blake was having with the cashier, fidgeting with the pack in his hands restlessly until he spotted a pair of shoes on the floor in front of him.

“What’re you doing here?” Ellis asked gruffly, unable to meet his friend’s eyes. Blake cleared his throat.

“I’m looking at a job offer nearby.” He answered easily, but it was clear that he was on a mission with this conversation. “Can— can we talk? Privately, I mean.”

“We are talking.” 

Despite how badly he wanted to scamper back home, Ellis sure got a kick out of fucking with Blake—especially in person. 

Blake immediately saw through his, admittedly obvious, defense mechanism. “Alright, look, I’m… sorry about the, uh, my last letter.” 

Ellis wracked his scrambled brains, sifting through the absolute pigsty that his memories had left the place. Blake’s last letter was completely normal, wasn’t it?

He wrote about how his mother was doing after that nasty tumble she took (she was back to baking pies in less than a week), mentioned her ongoing quest to find him a wifey, and then he went on about Schofield’s visit. That was it, as far as he could remember.

“...What?” He finally looked up at Blake. “What the hell are you on about?” 

The man across from him set his jaw, attempting to hide how fit he was to flee the scene.

“I wasn’t thinking, it was… I was having a rough night and I was— I was so lonely, it— I regretted it the moment I sent it out.” 

“Christ, if you didn’t want me to know your mum was okay you didn’t have to tell me.” 

They squinted at each other in confusion, neither quite understanding what the hell was going on.

“Sorry?” Blake furrowed his brow and tilted his head forward. “I was talking about my last letter. You know, the one where—” He lost their staring contest by darting his gaze off to the side. “Where I confessed my, uh. Feelings. For you.”

Ellis blinked once. Twice. “Your,” A third time. “Feelings.” 

“For you.” Blake finished bravely. 

He looked down at the pack of cigarettes in his hands. Why was it shaking? 

“I never got any letter like that.” Ellis said. “You haven’t written in three months.”

Blake fell silent. He could see the man nervously stuffing his hands in his pockets in his peripheral vision.

“You never… got… it…?” Ellis shook his head. “Ah. Then…” 

“I live less than a mile from here.” He interrupted whatever well-thought-out backtrack plan that Blake had concocted. “It’s a shithole, but it’s got a couch.”

Ellis chanced a look up at Blake’s face, where he could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes. 

“That’s much closer than my hotel room.” He nodded slowly. 

It wasn’t quite as cold when Ellis stepped back outside.

**Author's Note:**

> I am once again writing for absolutely nobody


End file.
